Thursday, March 17, 2011

They do care

I always wondered if newspaper readers care about mistakes and amateurish writing, two things that solid copy editing can cure. Apparently they do.

According to a study by a professor, Fred Vultee, "real people" can tell when the writing is poor and full of errors. His findings were announced during a session at a conference held by the American Copy Editors Society (ACES; I'm a member).

“If you think something is sloppy or amateurish, there’s a good chance (readers) do, too,” said Fred Vultee, an assistant professor at Wayne State University, who spoke at a session during the society’s 15th national conference.

Speaking of copy editing, I think the above sentence/paragraph tries to offer too much information. I might have made a second sentence saying this, Vultee spoke at a session during the society's 15th national conference.

My wife Holly and I worked with Vultee at the Wilmington (N.C.) Star-News in the 1980s. Fred was a terrific copy editor, and apparently he's a pretty good professor, too.


Contact: I can be reached at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.

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